from Part 1 - Beyond Americanisation (1937–1947)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 December 2023
Chapter 4 reconstruct how the zeitgeist, the political and economic practices, and the geopolitical and societal circumstances of the war times guided Western Europe to a path of deeper international and regional cooperation focused on free trade and valuta convertibility. During exile and occupation, European governments fleshed out plans and schemes for post-war cooperation, primordially in the domains of socio-economic and the financial-economic planning, in greater (practical) detail. Initially, however, the step from grand designs and lofty models for a post-war Western order that could ‘win the peace’ to the practices of policies of cooperation was taken via the institutional engineering in the Atlantic world, most prominently through the ‘system’ envisioned in Bretton Woods. However, the original ideas behind Bretton Woods soon proved a bridge too far in practice, which complicated global ambitions as well as the proper build-up of Atlantic-wide institutions—and pushed Western Europe to think and act ‘beyond Americanisation’.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.